Either I’m making the coffee too strong or every video on my X feed is now played at double speed. I noticed it a few weeks ago - interactions and calamities were sped up here and there, but for the most part time unfolded at a recognizably accurate pace. Now nearly all the videos have movements as herked and jerked as a Keystone Kops short, and the voices are clipped shrill, and chipmunky. It makes me back out right away, lest this cloud of electrified gnats fill my brain completely, but I imagine some people like it because it saves time and allows them to move to the next reel. Because it’s always about the next one.

The general effect of this is bad, bad, bad: the addict-tok audience will get even more impatient with Actual Life. I know I feel twitchy just watching five seconds of these things. It’s like a pliers reaching in my head and finding a nerve and twisting it tight. When you add the flood of vagueposting - people who just post “well that’s it, we’re cooked, no coming back from that” and hope you will click on the post to see more details - and the rise of these odd multi-part stories that most certainly did not happen except in blue, you wonder whether there’s just a point where everyone backs off and gives up.

Ha ha ha that’ll never happen

Only four more trips to Zork Storage and I’m done. Tossed out a lot yesterday, and had no problem doing so. For some reason in 2005 I decided to be a product design archivist to assist the future, and saved several boxes and fast-food containers, thinking I’d someday release them into the Great Stream. Let us just say that my feeling of obligation about such things has cooled and thinned.

But I did take pictures. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a 21-year old Kids Cuisine meal.

These were horrible, but I had them on hand in case of emergency. This one I know I saved because of the tie-in.

You know the big robot is smart and eager but also unsure of himself and in need of friends who have outsized personalities to make his dreams come true, right? And you know the smaller robot is a sassy gal who quips a lot and takes no guff and is braver than anyone, right?

CHARACTER SHAPED NUGGETS

THE NUGGETS

I remember the movie, somewhat. Visually brilliant, as you might expect: William Joyce was involved. When it was announced we thought it would be like Rolie Polie Olie with a 100-mil budget. It certainly had the Joyce look.

Did I mention it had Robin Williams? And that he was a fast-talking robot? Uh huh.

We watched it once. Olie, Defender of Fun, a hundred times.

Worst day in a long time, and I’m wondering if it’s worth trying to figure out why. Or just accept that these are going to appear at regular predictable intervals, regardless of what one did or did not do.

Perhaps it’s an inevitable downfall from the elation of Tuesday, which had a lot of work, feeling of productivity, happy supper, general peace, ice cream, Widow's Bay, and feeling as though things were in hand. Then I woke at 6:30 again, somewhat grateful to be up, since the dream had been bad. I dreamed that my wife and I were supposed to assassinate somebody, and I was really unhappy about it. Eventually, I just said no. We’re not going to do that, just like we didn’t do it the time before. Yes, I put my foot down: we were not going to murder someone. I felt a great sense of relief.

On the other hand, it was 630. I slept a bit more, and woke remembering that I was going to have a phone call with the new house owners about some things they couldn’t figure out. It depressed me in advance. I’m going have to go back there. I don’t want to go back there. Everything is more or less predicated on the previous life evaporating entirely. But no; back to the old house. Also: got a chatty but flat letter from the X describing the last few days with family in Arizona. I suppose that was part of it. Unmoored and solitary.

In the best of days, I know that this is for keeps, that I can do it; and the worst of days I know that it is for keeps, and I doubt that I can. But what exactly is it? Assembling a new life out of this situation; yes, but I’ll tell you something amusing: I am now nostalgic for last fall. Even for the last winter, when the nightmare was grinding away every day.

At least I was there, and at least I had company.